After our Florence and Red Rocks experience we had a little sleep in and faffed about before getting on the road to Yellowstone National Park. We had a good eight hour drive ahead of us through some beautiful scenery before setting up camp at a (sadly/luckily) bear free camp ground.
After a freezing night, which we were totally unprepared for, we set off for Yellowstone. We did stop off at a general store to buy three extra blankets before hitting the park.
On our way into the Grand Tetons National Park we were lucky enough to see a mother grizzly bear with two cubs. They were just off the road we were driving along and it was amazing to see these animals in their natural habitat.
The next beautiful thing were the Grand Tetons themselves. Every time they came into view we pulled over to get photos (hence the million photos here). They really were just stunning.
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| First sighting! |
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| Not the worst place to have lunch. |
We made our way into Yellowstone National Park and headed towards Old Faithful, a geyser in the Park which goes off fairly regularly.
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| Old Faithful doing what it does best. |
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| No blog post would be complete with a picture of a squirrel or in this case a chipmunk. |
The next stop on the Yellowstone tour were the artists paint pots. They weren't as colourful as expected but it was still cool to see all the bubbling and hissing and stuff spurting out of the ground.
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| Just a small storm rolling in. |
That night we headed out of the west entrance to the Park and set up camp. As we were in the mountains and it was cold we took the opportunity to light a fire and toast marshmallows.
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| Living the dream. |
Day 16 saw us heading back in to the Park to check out the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. On the way in we again pulled over so watch some elk graze. As we continued along we happened upon a herd of bison just doing their thing. They were a bit far away but it was still awesome seeing them in their natural habitat.
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| A lovely herd of bison. |
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| Solitary bison |
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| Marc enjoying some bison watching. |
After our animal spotting we made it to the "Grand Canyon" and decided to do one of the walks to the upper falls. We didn't quite make it all the way because there was a giant bull elk on our path munching away, oblivious to the line up of people trying to get past. Jerk. Not wanting to be gored we decided to turn back and view the falls from a safe, although a lot less cute, perspective.
Our last stop in Yellowstone was Mammoth Hot Springs. By this stage it was fairly late in the day and there were just too many people around to really get a good look at things so we only made a quick stop and enjoyed the sulphurous aroma before getting back in the car for a long night of driving.
